Australian Police Raid Home of Man Said to Be Likely Creator of Bitcoin

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The Australian Federal Police on Wednesday raided the suburban Sydney home of a man named by Wired magazine and Gizmodo as the probable creator of the digital currency Bitcoin.Published OnDec. 9, 2015CreditImage by Byron Kaye/Reuters

By Michelle Innis and Austin Ramzy

Dec. 9, 2015

SYDNEY, Australia — The Australian authorities on Wednesday raided the home of a computer expert and entrepreneur in suburban Sydney, just hours after two news outlets identified the man as a likely creator of the digital currency Bitcoin.

The Australian Federal Police said the raid on the residence of the man, Craig Steven Wright, was for a tax investigation, and a spokesman said it had no connection to the Bitcoin reports. The Australian Taxation Office, which asked the police to carry out the raid, declined to comment on “any individual’s or entity’s tax affairs.”

The raid, in the leafy suburb of Gordon on Sydney’s upper north shore, came hours after reports in Wired magazine and Gizmodo drew strong links between Mr. Wright and Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator of the virtual currency that has grown to billions of dollars in total value.

The identity of Mr. Nakamoto has been a mystery since the currency’s computer code was released in 2009, with several false leads having been aired and debunked. The growing value of Bitcoin, which is managed by computers that run its peer-to-peer software, has driven the search for its creator or creators.

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The Australian Federal Police on Wednesday raided the suburban Sydney home of a man named by Wired magazine and Gizmodo as the probable creator of the digital currency Bitcoin.Published OnDec. 9, 2015CreditImage by Byron Kaye/Reuters

Wired, which was first to identify Mr. Wright as a possible inventor of the currency, cited old blog posts as well as leaked documents and emails. The magazine acknowledged that the trail of clues could be a hoax, but it added: “If Wright is seeking to fake his Nakamoto connection, his hoax would be practically as ambitious as Bitcoin itself.”

The Gizmodo report said that Mr. Wright and Dave Kleiman, an American who died in 2013, “were involved in the development of the digital currency.”

Both outlets cited what was described as a transcript of a 2014 meeting among Mr. Wright, lawyers and tax officials, in which he is quoted as saying, “I did my best to try and hide the fact that I’ve been running Bitcoin since 2009.”

“By the end of this, I think half the world is going to bloody know,” he added, according to the transcript.

Efforts to reach Mr. Wright on Wednesday were unsuccessful.

A Newsweek investigation in 2014 incorrectly identified the Bitcoin creator as Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto, a physicist living with his mother in Southern California. He denied the report, saying he had only learned of Bitcoin weeks earlier after a reporter contacted his son.